Saint Clew
“Lady Myrne, do you find the place strange?” Odo asked, sitting beside her in the empty vestibule.
“My Lord, why would it ever be strange to me? I have seen many an abbey. My father supports one.”
“But I was thinking you were of the Royan faith, schooled on the Rootless Isle.”
Myrne nodded.
“Besides, it has been said that up in the North there is a resurgence of the old religion.”
“It comes from a discontent with the new one,” Myrne said, “and the alliance Edmund has made with many of the White Monasteries. But that is more politics than religion, I imagine.”
“Forgive me,” Odo said. “I grew up a prince.”
“And your brother is a king.”
“I cannot but help mix my religion and my politics.”
“I do everything I can to help it,” Myrne said. “I revere the Way. Is it not true that in your own country you worship your olds gods, which are ours by different names, and you still practice the Way?”
“It is so. That was the compromise, or rather the way of things taught by the Grey Monks—”
“Who themselves came to you from my own Hale. They are a dying breed unfortunately, and yes, I do know how men use gods to fight their battles, but as for me, I was taught that when The Ard, The Great Teacher, came, he came to teach all men that the gods they sought in heaven were actually to be found within, and I have no quarrel, but only great agreement with that.”
“You are a most fascinating woman,” Odo said.
“Not really,” Myrne shrugged.
“Yes,” Odo insisted. “Really.”
They looked up to see Hilary enter, and she said, “Lady Myrne, there are guest here for you.”
Myrne frowned, and at once a voice behind Hilary said, “Well not only for her, but yes.”
Myrne was startled to see Pollanikar, the granddaughter of Nimerly, and beside her, in green, his cloak thrown back, Michael Flynn.
“What in the world?” Myrne exclaimed. “And how did I not sense you?”
“Or me?” Wolf said.
The dark skinned Pollaninkar looked very proud and prim and she said, “Wolf did not sense us because no matter how good a tracker he is, Michael is better, and you did not sense me,” she said to Myrne, “because I am witch trained on the Rootless Isle, just like you. We did not wish to be known.”
“Did you do this on your own accord?” Wolf said.
“We are far too close to Ambridge for my comfort,” Michael said, “Edmund is no friend of mine.”
“Ohean sent us,” Pollanikar said. “He believed you would need us.”
“Ohean,” Wolf said, tenderly. “Good old Ash! But damn him.”
Polly nodded and smiled, placing one long hand over the other.
“My sentiments indeed.”
Ulfin
Ulfin Baldwin had not been sure who would win the war. He had left the palace in Ambridge one night and traveled through the south, through Inglad into Westrial and, at last, to the women of the Rootless Isle. He told no one, for the Royan were feared among the Hale. Here, on the Isle of Crystal, only greed outweighed his fear.
When the women came to him on their great raft and asked who he sought, he replied in truth, “The woman who journeyed north some time ago, greatest of prophetesses. Nimerly, the Crystal Lady.”
“I am not the greatest prophetess among us,” she said, “For that you must go to my daughter, Meredith.”
Meredith was sixteen and dark. Ulfin felt foolish before her cool expression and told her “I seek to know who will win this war.”
“And whom you should stand beside?”
“Yes,” Ulfin said. “Always.”
“The Lord Ulfin is cautious.”
“Some would say caution is the best part of wisdom.”
“Some would,” Meredith shrugged.
“Will you tell me?”
“I will tell you,” she said, “but there is a price.”
“I have gold.”
“I do too. That is not my price.”
“Then what is?”
“Wed me.”
“I have a wife.”
“When your people crossed the sea a man could have more than one wife, and women had more than one man some times. This I know. You turned away from those customs, but we Royan never outlawed them. Here, in this house, they are still honored.”
“That is fair and good,” said Ulfin, “but out in the real world—”
“The world that tells you nothing of the future? The world you are leaving to learn from me in my false world?”
“Forgive me, Lady, but you know what I mean. I could never bear you on my shoulder beside my wife, tell her and the world you were my second wife, and we all live in a castle together—”
Here, the girl Meredith with her twiggy crown of hair, threw her head back and laughed so scornfully, Ulfin, who was beaten by no man, felt slapped in the face by a woman.
“I do not want to stand at your side,” she said, and her voice was toneless. “And I do not want to live in a castle. Not with you, at least. I want you to put a baby in my belly, and I will not allow you to do that if you are not my husband.”
A girl so young and so beautiful saying this! His cock rose up, so firm it ached, a drop of sticky liquid beaded from the head of his prick, pressing against his underwear.
“Later, I may wed in the open or not at all. I only insist on having your baby.”
“And you know once will do the trick?”
“Do not pretend to be simple, for you are not, Lord. I have watched your progress. But we must marry tonight. The sooner we start, the better.”
They were married in the old way, but at her talk, Ulfin forgot prophecy and knew only that he, five and forty, with a nubile girl before him, wanted to fuck. He plunged his cock deep in her and she cried out, a virgin. He fucked her slowly at first and then quicker, her voice rising in pain or pleasure he could not tell. He grew harder and harder the more she cried out, and it wasn’t long before his body was seized in orgasm, and he shivered hard, shook, and erupted inside of her.
Later, as he dressed to go, she said, simply, “Edmund will win. Support him, and your power will remain.”
He tucked in his shirt.
“Do you care if my power remains?”
“I very much care,” the girl said, stretching under the sheet and watching him, almost lazily.
“If you are not yet the father of my child, you soon will be.”
By the end of the year, Ulfin was standing beside his proud wife in Saint Aidan’s Basilica, and they watched as Archbishop Longeril placed the crown on Edmund’s head and he was declared king to cheers that, perhaps, had more Dauman voices that Hale. In those days it had been the white gold haired Ulfin, prepared to hold onto power, who cheered the loudest. After all, under the Dayne conquerors he had been appointed Earl, ruler of the Three Kingdoms, and now it was Edmund. At the feast afterward, in the great hall of Whitecastle, he and the new king did a delicate dance, the one that said after all the fighting, the most powerful man in the Three Kingdoms still lived untouched, for in the end, it was undeniably and openly Ulfin who had acknowledged Edmund. It would always be a sticky issue that Ulfin seemed to have giventhe conqueror his kingdom, and five years into Edmund’s reign, in the sight of all, he gave his daughter Edith as wife and Queen.
The look on Edmund’s face when he had accepted Ulfin’s proposal to marry into his family, caused such pleasure in Ulfin he told himself over and over again to look humble, actually to look like nothing. But by the end of the day Ulfin had received another cause for surprise if not outright rejoicing, a note all the way from the Crystal Isle, written in a girl’s fluid, round hand.
After five years, I am with child.
